s face; and when
you do see it, the most of it is wrinkles.

All egotism and insanity, this, gentlemen. Hard words to use; but not
too hard to define the faults which rendered so much of Duerer's great
genius abortive, and to this day paralyze, among the details of a
lifeless and ambitious precision, the student, no less than the artist,
of German blood. For too many an Erasmus, too many a Duerer, among them,
the world is all cloak and clasp, instead of face or book; and the first
object of their lives is to engrave their initials.

178. For us, in England, not even so much is at present to be hoped; and
yet, singularly enough, it is more our modesty, unwisely submissive,
than our vanity, which has destroyed our English school of engraving.

At the bottom of the pretty line engravings which used to represent,
characteristically, our English skill, one saw always _two_
inscriptions. At the left-hand corner, "Drawn by--so-and-so;" at the
right-hand corner, "Engraved by--so-and-so." Only under the worst and
cheapest plates--for the Stationers' Almanack, or the like--one saw
sometimes, "Drawn and engraved by--so-and-so," which meant nothing more
than that the publisher would not go to the expense of an artist, and
that the engraver haggled through as he could. (One fortunate exception,
gentlemen, you have in the old drawings for your Oxford Almanack, though
the publishers, I have no doubt, even in that case, employed the
cheapest artist they could find.[AR]) But in general, no engraver
thought himself able to draw; and no artist thought it his business to
engrave.

179. But the fact that this and the following lecture are on the subject
of design in engraving, implies of course that in the work we have to
examine, it was often the engraver himself who designed, and as often
the artist who engraved.

And you will observe that the only engravings which bear imperishable
value are, indeed, in this kind. It is true that, in wood-cutting, both
Duerer and Holbein, as in our own days Leech and Tenniel, have workmen
under them who can do all they want. But in metal cutting it is not so.
For, as I have told you, in metal cutting, ultimate perfection of Line
has to be reached; and it can be reached by none but a master's hand;
nor by his, unless in the very moment and act of designing. Never,
unless under the vivid first force of imagination and intellect, can the
Line have its full value. And for this high reason, gentlemen, th